host galaxy
by antarcticas
Summary: "You're beautiful," he says. "No," she replies. "I'm broken." Percy and Annabeth try to overcome their monsters.


_1_

* * *

 _monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. they live inside us, and sometimes, they win.- stephen king_

It's dark and rainy and the world is gloomy and deadly and all she wants to do is escape this, this world inside her head that she's stuck in, that she can't leave. She's Alice in Wonderland and she's fallen down the rabbit hole and there's a scary, scary thing about it - she's stuck, she's stuck in a self-imposed cage and she can't get out.

And she cries, she cries and cries and cries until the sun breaks out from behind the glaring moon and she can feel again and she dries her tears and stands up and smiles because that's what heroes do and she's a hero. They might be in pieces but at the end they still smile, and damn it, they still get up. She'll get up and she'll smile and she'll put on a brave face until the sun falls across the horizon and she does too, she falls but not into the horizon, into memories of suffering and death and despair, into an endless pit which she's finding hard to drag herself out of.

And then he's there and he pulls her into his arms, a bright hero but shrouded in darkness when light falls, and he always knows what to say, exactly what to say because he's part of her and she's part of him and they know each other so, so well. Living in both literal and figurative Hell does that to people, gives them an unbreakable bond which the Fates weaved themselves, and now they couldn't be apart if they wanted to, which they definitely don't.

It's Heaven and Hell and this perfect balance between light and dark but the scales are tipping, tipping into a void of evil and black. It's slow. So slow they can barely notice, but barely it is, and soon they are bystanders as the world falls before their very eyes.

* * *

 _2_

 _he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? - friedrich nietzsche_

The young ones are all sitting around the fire, looking hopefully into her eyes. They want a story, an entertaining story with monsters where the good guys win because the good guys always win. She smiles and she tells them the story, but she doesn't tell them the truth. _Some monsters don't die with your sword_ , she wants to say. _Some win and you don't even know it till it's too late._

One of them walks up to her later, in an hour where the sun doesn't shine in the sky and she's wary to retire for the night because of the dreams, the dreams that always plague her. They ask her a question.

"Aren't you scared?" the child wants the answer no, that there is nothing to be afraid of even though the world is dangerous, ever so dangerous. But she is not a liar, and she will tell the truth even if it will break his young heart.

"Yes," she breathes. In, out. In, out. "Yes, I'm afraid, and that's good. I wouldn't be part human if I wasn't."

The child thinks the other half of her is the god. She knows the other half is the monster, the one who's slowly, quietly, overtaking her soul.

* * *

 _3_

 _if you battle monsters, you don't always become a monster. but you aren't entirely human anymore, either.- jonathan maberry_

He's lost, and she goes to find him because she's the only one who really has the capacity to think about him like that anymore, she's the only one who can find him from where he's lying in the dust and bring him back into the world of the living. Sometimes, most of the time, he doesn't want to get up but she takes him with her anyways because if he's gone she's gone and who knows what will truly happen to their bound souls after that.

There's a storm, a storm raging and blowing wind across the land from the ocean. The mortals are all frightened, hiding in their homes because so many of them are gone already. She thinks it is his father's rage, thinks until she sees him sitting on the cliff and commanding his world.

She doesn't cry, she doesn't yell. She tells him to stop. They have learned that it is better to not ask sometimes, that it is sometimes better to tell because common sense is something they must practice before they lose it, lose it like the rest of them.

She can feel his concentration slip away from the waters and onto her, but even though his energy is not concentrated there his anger is, so the seas rock and wave in their evil, hypnotizing pattern and she had to tear her eyes away from the raw emotion.

She wants to ask what's wrong, but he speaks first. "I'm not human."

"You never were," she replies, in more ways than one.

"No," he says, eyes wide open. "I used to be able to feel."

"And now?"

"Now it's just dark," he tells her plainly, and she nods in silent agreement. _Dark dark dark dark dark dark . . ._

* * *

 _4_

 _we stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized that they were inside of us, instead.- the joker_

The rain is humanity, breaking and building. But it needs time to erode, time to gather. She wonders if the monster has succeeded in taking over yet. She will not be here when the rain finally washes everything away. It will.

A drop falls onto her hand, and she stares at it, considering the wetness as it slides out of her fingers. Humanity. Rain is humanity. It is here, then not, and it destroys and builds, just like her. She mainly destroys, though. Destroys and rebuilds and destroys again because it's the circle of life, but hell, she hates the monotone destroying and rebuilding. She is something different. She will do more than create and destroy - she will do it in perfect harmony. A world being rebuilt and collapsing at the same time. Just like her.

It screams and she screams, a ghost of who she used to be. First it was gray and now black and it wants to take over, and she is starting to want it to be in charge. She wants to let go. She wants to be herself again, not a hybrid of god and human and monster with a shadow slyly creeping over it all.

For the shadow is here, the shadow creeps and smiles and dances. She is helpless, she knows, for her only weapon is humanity, and it is slowly dripping away, rolling into crevices it will never be seen again.

 _Plop._ The rain falls, and she does, too.

* * *

 _5_

 _the monsters you run from are those you can see. the monster i run from is inside me.- anonymous_

They're standing on a beach, the same beach which has seen blood and love and life and death and every single bloody thing in between. She's wringing her hands together, and they watch as the sun goes down. He watches her shaking and holds her.

"It's okay," he whispers. "It'll be alright."

"I don't think so anymore," she tells him.

He looks up, into her face. "You're beautiful," he says.

"No," she replies. "I'm broken."

They don't say anything, just stare at the waves, unmoving and still, glass statues just waiting to shatter.

* * *

 _6_

 _whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. and if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."_

― _friedrich nietzsche_

It's sobbing, crying and crying that lasts long into the night. He lies beside her and holds her shaking figure. He does not tame the monster through anguish but anger, a red hot fire which burns within and makes everything go up in flames. Including his heart, which is oblivious to any feeling but love for her. It is the shred of uncharted humanity he hangs onto when the rest is no longer there.

She sniffles and he pulls her closer to him, wishing he could take all her sorrow and make it his. He has often wondered why, if the Fates had to give him such a fate, they dragged her into it. His girl is beautiful but also cracked in an unique pattern, and he's searched and searched but no one knows how to help her. They are together in their suffering for eternity, because damn destiny had to go make him drag her into his life and then refuse to let him let her go.

The stars are bright, bright, bright as he looks out the window, and all he thinks is that they shine in the dark depths of light like his wise girl, a star struggling against dark monsters, a star that won't concede to the black. He already has, he thinks. He has accepted the dark and it has made him powerful but made him unstable.

Evil does that to people. He wishes Luke was alive so he could talk to somebody, because evil consumes if it is bottled up, and with nobody to talk to he is building pressure and soon he will explode. Evil takes care of its own while destroying them at the same time.

 _There is no good or bad,_ he thinks, _just power and power and power and those who have it and don't._

He doesn't go to sleep, just watches her and tries to remember when exactly it all went crashing down.

* * *

 _7_

 _it takes a monster to destroy a monster. - anonymous_

Sometimes, she realizes that nothing has even changed. She was always a monster, deep, deep within, and now that part of her has reached the light of day, and it is shining, like all dark things do. She is not scared of what she will become because she is already the worst of it.

The cage she has created for herself has been there for eternity, in a way. It was the shining dark which showed it to her, though, and she has grown grateful. It would not do to participate in her own fall from grace, and she has. She is falling from grace into a pit of emotion, of love and loss and pride and humility. She is okay with falling into there. She will be safe.

The monsters she has killed, she realizes, are not the true ones. The real ones live inside your head, and they feed off your sins and they speak through your anger. Those are the true evils, and they are a part of her just like the light. One cannot exist without the other.

She is dark, perhaps, but she is also beautiful. Things in the dark can shine, with an opening gleam rather than a blinding one. She has had her eyes opened, and he has had his opened too. It is a part of them that they cannot deny, which they can only accept and strengthen.

She is a monster, and she is beautiful, and she is broken, and she will live through it all.

* * *

 **hey guys, i wrote this fic a while ago on my other account [which i renamed 'my breathing cosmos']. i have a bit of writers block right now, so i'm going to go back and edit old oneshots i've written.**

 **-dee**


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